Coby Electronics Corporation is a manufacturer of consumer electronics products headquartered in Lake Success, New York, with offices and factories around the world (including the United States, Mexico, and China). With the joint efforts of Coby Electronics Co. of Hong Kong and Coby Electronics Corp. of the United States the products have reached consumers in Asia, North America, South America and Europe;however, the company mostly sells in Europe and the United States. Coby also serves as an OEM manufacturer for brands including Samsung, NEC, RadioShack’s Presidian brand and Hyundai. Coby formerly provided OEM manufacturing for Daewoo, which is now defunct.

It was founded by Young Dong Lee who owns 100 percent of its capital stock. Its name comes from deleting the “w” and second “o” in Cowboy.The logo is written in Bookman Old Style Bold,which resembles the serif font used in the Sony logo. Lee (born 1955 in South Korea) originally owned an electronics wholesaler called Cowboy.

The company’s original headquarters was in an industrial area of Maspeth, Queens. In 2008 it moved the world headquarters to Lake Success, New York. The former headquarters remains as a company warehouse.

Since the establishment of a new factory and new manufacturing processes in early 2006, the company has very publicly sought to re-brand itself as a maker of higher-quality goods; they tend, however, to be in the low-price range.Its main factory is on 400 acres (1.6 km2) in Jiangxi Province in China. It was designed to accommodate up to 5,000 employees.

Coby voluntarily conducted four product recalls in the past three years, on 10/22/2009, 10/8/2008, 11/8 and 4/18/2007. In all instances, Coby provided full refunds to all consumers. Some consumers have reported issues with the MP822-4G, and Coby has made available a downloadable “fix” on its website, at http://www.cobyusa.com/?p=fix_mp822.

Company Names

This company also does business under the name of Coby Electronics Inc.and Foshan Coby Electronics Corporation.

Domain name

In 2006, Coby Electronics Corporation unsuccessfully attempted to use the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy to acquire the coby.com domain from Coby O’Brien, an individual who first registered it in 1996. This is commonly referred to as reverse domain hijacking. O’Brien successfully defended his ownership of the domain. Coby Electronics Corporation uses cobyusa.com instead.